ABSTRACT
The volume of Southwest Asian heroin available for world markets has increased sharply and growing amounts are smuggled through Ukraine. Ukraine adopted a new constitution in 1996 that opened the door for radical legal and judicial reform. Ukraine is at a strategic crossroads between Southwest Asia and markets in Western Europe. The importance of Ukraine to drug traffickers as a transit corridor to western and central Europe continues to increase. Processing raw opium into heroin powder is a three-stage process: from morphine base, to heroin base, to heroin power. High prices for heroin and cocaine have drawn many Ukrainian drug users to domestically cultivated poppy straw. Countries on trafficking routes can suffer from drug usage problems, since traffickers often pay intermediaries with in-kind drug product. In 1995-1996, Ukrainian law enforcement detected ten Nigerian gangs that used commercial activities as a front for heroin trafficking.
